


Hissaara Kadan - The Heart Canto

by EmberLeo



Series: The Emberquizzy Chronicles [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Modern Girl in Thedas, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:14:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27837379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmberLeo/pseuds/EmberLeo
Summary: Bull and Dorian discuss Bull's relationship with Inquisitor Ember.A side story from the Canticle of DreamsShould stand alone, but fits in somewhere after 39. Probably after 42.
Relationships: Background Female Inquisitor/Solas, Female Inquisitor & The Iron Bull (Dragon Age), Iron Bull/Dorian Pavus
Series: The Emberquizzy Chronicles [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1241567
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Hissaara Kadan - The Heart Canto

**Author's Note:**

> “Hissaara” for “song, canto” from the canon Qunlat words: Asaara: Wind, Hissra: Illusion, Hissera: Hope
> 
> I've had this one sitting in my box of random side bits for quite a while now, waiting for an opportune moment. :)
> 
> -E-

The Iron Bull leaned his head back against his hand and sighed gustily. He smirked with satisfaction as his lover, Dorian, stretched like a cat and draped himself across Bull’s torso. The mage leaned his head against one of Bull’s huge pectorals, and trailed slender fingers along the contours of the larger man’s abdominal muscles. Bull wrapped his free arm around Dorian’s back. The only thing either of them wore were the two halves of a dragon’s tooth, wrapped in wire and strung on cord for matching necklaces. Even Bull’s omnipresent eyepatch had come off sometime in the last, most pleasant hour of their exertions.

“Royal for your thoughts,  _ Kadan _ ,” Bull rumbled quietly.

“I thought it was supposed to be a penny?”

“You’re better in gold.” Bull angled his head to watch the brief expression of startled delight Dorian inevitably wore when he was too exhausted to deflect the compliment with exaggerated, self-mocking praise.

Well, almost too exhausted. “It’s true, gold does contrast with my skin much better than bronze.”

“And it doesn’t tarnish. So?”

“So? My thoughts, yes. Actually… well, I was wondering if I was your first.”

“My first what?”

“ _ Kadan _ .”

Bull paused, trying to decide how to approach this. Qunlat rarely translated cleanly into other languages, and he was already sure from the way Dorian asked that the conversation would go poorly if he didn’t handle it just so.

“You are the first person I have ever called ‘ _ Kadan _ ’, yes.”

“The first you’ve  _ called  _ ‘ _ Kadan _ ’. But not the first you’ve felt for?” Dorian’s voice was light, which Bull knew was a sign he was holding himself back, protecting himself. Again.

“ _ Dorian _ ,” he groaned.

“I’m merely asking,  _ Amatus _ .”

“Alright, fine, no, you’re not the first I’ve wanted to call ‘ _ Kadan _ ’, but that's not… it doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s not like ‘ _ Amatus _ ’.”

Dorian flinched briefly before assuming a pleasant expression, and lifting his head to look Bull directly in the eye. “What does it mean, then?”

Bull sighed in frustration. “In your case, it means something like ‘ _ Amatus’ _ combined with…  _ Rrrrgh _ , I don’t know, it doesn’t translate. ‘Closest to the heart’ is sort of close, but it doesn’t mean ‘closest’ in the sense that outsiders expect.” He stared at the ceiling, thinking. “You don’t have mates under the Qun. You don’t have one person valued above all others. That would go against the teachings of the Qun. ‘ _ Kadan _ ’ is more like… someone you care about  _ personally, _ someone whose role isn’t what matters to you.”

“A friend, then,” Dorian suggested gently. At his tone, Bull looked down at him again, relieved to see his understanding expression.

“The way  _ you _ mean it, yeah. Maybe not the way Varric means it, and definitely not the way Sera means it.”

“The way Ember calls those of us closest to her ‘chosen family’.”

“Yeah.”

“So who else would you call  _ ‘Kadan’ _ if you could, and why don’t you?”

“Well, Krem, for one, but I don’t want the others to think I mean it like I do with you.”

“You’re not worried Krem would misunderstand?”

Bull smirked. “Nah, Krem gets me. That’s why I’d call him  _ ‘Kadan’ _ . Maybe some of the other oldtimers would too. But I can’t play favorites like that, so I just call ‘em all my Chargers, and they understand. That’s what really matters.”

“Of course. And the others?”

The fond grin Bull always wore when he talked about his Chargers dropped away, leaving his face carefully blank. “There was a young  _ Kaarashok _ I knew in Seheron. He was grouped with me for localization training when we were both new. He was interested enough in outsider cultures, he could have been  _ Ben-Hassrath _ if he weren’t such a crap liar, so they’d put him in the  _ Beresaad _ . I had to sit watch with him for weeks, night after fuckin’ night of nothing but mist and cicaidas. The only reason we didn’t both go crazy out of boredom before they gave us a new shift was his sense of humor. The kid told the weirdest stories I’d ever heard. Made most of them up on the fly. He said his favorite  _ Tama _ was an old Elven woman who became  _ viddathari _ as a kid, and she would make up stories for them out of anything they brought to her. So he did the same whenever he was bored.”

Dorian’s eyebrows furrowed. “Why didn’t you call him  _ ‘Kadan’ _ ?”

“Never got the chance. Seven months in, back on the midnight watch, a group of Fog Warriors attacked. He did his duty to the Qun, took out half of them before they finally took him down. It was obvious why they’d put him under the  _ Arishok _ . He loved the fight even more than I do. I don’t know what they poisoned him with to take him out. I’ve never seen the reaction since. Maybe it was just who he was. Little shit died  _ laughing _ .” He paused a moment, then added. “Reinforcements arrived in time to save my ass, but not his. After that, I learned not to get attached. Nobody lasts long in Seheron.”

Dorian’s empathetic expression reflected the pain Bull didn’t let cross his face. He loved that about the  _ Altus _ : when he felt safe enough, he could let everything show, baring his heart for a precious few. Bull loved that he could make Dorian feel safe enough, that he was one of those few.

Dorian reached up to place a hand on Bull’s stubble-rough cheek, and then lifted himself up to join their lips gently. Bull tightened his arm around the mage’s back, taking the opportunity to grope his ass. Dorian jerked slightly, startled, giving his  _ Amatus _ a mock stern look.

“Is that all? The  _ Kaarashok _ and Krem?” Dorian prompted pointedly before settling back down at Bull’s side.

Bull inhaled slowly through his nose, but didn’t speak. They were still just settling into this exclusive relationship thing. He didn’t want to spook his  _ Kadan _ so soon after they’d admitted their feelings for each other. For all he made the smaller man feel safe, there was still a skittish streak just waiting to be triggered. Bull had enough trouble convincing Dorian he really mattered. This wasn’t going to help, dammit.

Dorian tilted his head to look up at him again. Bull shook his head slightly, and exhaled sharply, glaring at Dorian. “You’re fishing,  _ Kadan _ .”

Dorian smirked, laughter in his eyes, but Bull could still see the worry in the tension of his neck, the angle of his brows. “Of course I’m fishing,  _ Amatus _ . Is there some reason you don’t want to answer?”

“You’re going to take it the wrong way,” Bull grumbled.

Dorian’s expression grew serious. “Am I? Have I taken it the wrong way thus far?”

“Not exactly, but…”

“Just tell me, Bull,” Dorian prodded. “You know I will imagine far worse if you don’t.”

_ Dammit.  _ Bull could picture all too easily the crazy shit Dorian would invent to worry about if he didn’t ‘fess up now. “Fine! Yes, there is another one I would call ‘ _ Kadan’ _ if it wouldn’t be misunderstood.”

“And that is…”

“Ember,” Bull growled. “ _ Happy _ ?”

“Ha! I was  _ right _ !” Dorian crowed, sitting up so he could look directly at Bull’s face, smirking triumphantly.

That wasn’t entirely the reaction Bull was expecting, leaving him suspicious of when whatever worries the complicated mage had sidelined were going to come back around to bite them.

But for now, Dorian actually seemed more relaxed, and even amused. “You would bed her if you could, wouldn’t you?”

Bull rolled his eye. “I would bed most people,  _ Kadan _ , you know that.”

“Granted. Especially most redheads, as you’re so fond of declaring. However did you end up with me?”

“You’re  _ hot _ ,” Bull replied, his tone flat, but his lip curling at one edge.

Sure enough, Dorian preened humorously in response. “True! So, why not simply tell Ember? I’m sure she’d accept your explanation of... whatever it means in her case.”

Bull shook his head, and held up two fingers. “Solas. Cullen.”

“Both of them?” Dorian’s eyes widened. “I knew our dear Commander fancied her, but I didn’t get the impression it was mutual.”

“It’s not, as far as I know. But it would still bug him. He was in Kirkwall during the old  _ Arishok’s _ attack. He might get weird about it if I seemed too into her, and she doesn’t need that kind of a mess for no reason.”

“Ah, a fair point. And Solas?”

Bull shrugged. “He might not care now that I’m  _ Tal-Vashoth _ , but I don’t want to risk it. She’s really into him. I don’t want to get in her way.”

“Fascinating! You still haven’t answered my question, though,  _ Amatus _ .”

“Which one?”

“Would you bed her if you could? Are you, as you say, into her?”

Bull contemplated the question, answering slowly, as much to himself as to Dorian. “If it was what she needed, yeah. But it wouldn’t be just fun with her. And it’s not like us, where we  _ both _ need it. This, with you, this is for me, too. That’s not… what I’m used to.” He paused to look Dorian in the eye, to make sure his  _ Kadan _ understood why it mattered. Dorian nodded encouragingly, a soft smile turning the corners of his too-tempting lips. Bull blinked slowly, tamping down the urge to change the subject entirely, and continued. “So, if I bedded the Boss, it would be in service to someone I care about. Right now, what she needs is to know I’m safe. So, no, I don’t want to bed her.”

Dorian shook his head, smiling fondly at Bull. “You are a far more considerate man than you let show,  _ Amatus _ .”

Bull grunted. “Don’t spread it around. I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”


End file.
